Recently I noticed that VLC can't disable the screensaver while playing. The VLC team suggested that the 4.8.1 and xdg-utils is broken. Is hat the case? Should I open a bug report?

It seems now to work fine. I didn;t change anything.

I will keep an eye to this.

I installed KDE 4.8.2 (ArchLinux) on a new machine and there is the same issue. Actually KDE does not listen to Inhibit Dbus commands.

E.g.

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dbus-send --session --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver  org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.Inhibit string:xxxx string:"Testing D-Bus Interface"

Or

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qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.Inhibit "xxxx" "Testing D-Bus Interface"

Where xxxx: I tried Window ID (0x220001a for example), PID, Window title.

After the time out the screen saver will pop up.

If I run qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.Lock the screen saver will start locked. So the issue is with Inhibit method.

Any ideas?

Please file a bug report at bugs.kde.org, as it appears there may be a regression here.

I will do so.

For now I changed the xdg-screensvaer in order to stop the screensaver when vlc plays a movie. I am using the org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.SimulateUserActivity call.

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--- xdg-screensaver.old 2011-01-01 12:03:14.000000000 +0200
+++ xdg-screensaver.new 2012-04-30 19:35:49.000000000 +0300
@@ -418,7 +418,7 @@
   case "$DE" in
     kde)
       if [ x"$KDE_SESSION_VERSION" = x"4" ]; then
-          screensaver_freedesktop "$1"
+          screensaver_kde4_vlc "$1"
       else
           screensaver_kde "$1"
       fi
@@ -546,6 +546,30 @@
   cleanup_suspend
 }
 
+screensaver_kde4_vlc()
+{
+    case "$1" in
+        suspend)
+        screensaver_suspend_loop dbus-send --session \
+                                           --dest=org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver \
+                                           --type=method_call \
+                                           /ScreenSaver \
+                                           org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.SimulateUserActivity \
+                                           >| "$screensaver_file.cookie" \
+                                           2> /dev/null
+        result=$?
+        ;;
+
+        resume)
+        if [ -f "$screensaver_file.cookie" ] ; then
+            rm -f "$screensaver_file.cookie"
+        fi
+        result=$?
+        ;;
+       
+    esac
+}
+
 screensaver_freedesktop()
 {
     case "$1" in


I'm trying to do the same thing, disable the screensaver while playing vlc. What is the code you have here? How do I use it?

firewalker wrote:

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--- xdg-screensaver.old 2011-01-01 12:03:14.000000000 +0200
+++ xdg-screensaver.new 2012-04-30 19:35:49.000000000 +0300
@@ -418,7 +418,7 @@
   case "$DE" in
     kde)
       if [ x"$KDE_SESSION_VERSION" = x"4" ]; then
-          screensaver_freedesktop "$1"
+          screensaver_kde4_vlc "$1"
       else
           screensaver_kde "$1"
       fi
@@ -546,6 +546,30 @@
   cleanup_suspend
 }
 
+screensaver_kde4_vlc()
+{
+    case "$1" in
+        suspend)
+        screensaver_suspend_loop dbus-send --session \
+                                           --dest=org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver \
+                                           --type=method_call \
+                                           /ScreenSaver \
+                                           org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.SimulateUserActivity \
+                                           >| "$screensaver_file.cookie" \
+                                           2> /dev/null
+        result=$?
+        ;;
+
+        resume)
+        if [ -f "$screensaver_file.cookie" ] ; then
+            rm -f "$screensaver_file.cookie"
+        fi
+        result=$?
+        ;;
+       
+    esac
+}
+
 screensaver_freedesktop()
 {
     case "$1" in


That is a patch file, intended to be applied against the script xdg-screensaver.
Patches are applied by the "patch" command, which you may need to install.

Assuming you save the above patch as ~/xdg-screensaver-fix.patch, the following commands will create a local version of xdg-screensaver under your user account.

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cp /usr/bin/xdg-screensaver ~/bin/xdg-screensaver
cd ~/bin
patch -p0 -i ~/xdg-screensaver-fix.patch
chmod +x ~/bin/xdg-screensaver

If patch asks which file to apply the fix to, specify ~/bin/xdg-screensaver.

bcooksley wrote:That is a patch file, intended to be applied against the script xdg-screensaver.
Patches are applied by the "patch" command, which you may need to install.

Assuming you save the above patch as ~/xdg-screensaver-fix.patch, the following commands will create a local version of xdg-screensaver under your user account.

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cp /usr/bin/xdg-screensaver ~/bin/xdg-screensaver
cd ~/bin
patch -p0 -i ~/xdg-screensaver-fix.patch
chmod +x ~/bin/xdg-screensaver

If patch asks which file to apply the fix to, specify ~/bin/xdg-screensaver.

Thanks! I've wanted to know how to do that. I appreciate learning about the local bin too.

Not a problem. Please note that ~/bin is not universal, and may not work on some distributions. You can check if it does work by running "echo $PATH" in a terminal and checking to see if ~/bin is included in the output.